Anne Bradstreet
Verses upon the Burning of our House
The theological concept of humankind's inherent depravity created tension in the lives of seventeenth century New England Puritans. The Puritans believed that humans were born sinful and remained in this condition throughout life. This doctrine stressed self-discipline and introspection, through which the Puritan sought to determine whether particular spiritual strivings were genuine marks of true religiosity. God preordained election to heaven, and some Puritans would be saved through the righteousness of Jesus Christ despite their sins. There was no certainty in this life what eternal destiny awaited because the knowledge of who was elect was a divine mystery. The experience of conversion, where the soul, touched by the Holy Spirit, is turned from sinfulness to holiness, was at least some indication of election. Although full assurance might never be attained, the conviction of having been chosen by God fortified the Puritans to contend with the hardships of creating a community of Christ in the New World. This fundamental knowledge of personal depravity, the essence of Puritan theology, created an atmosphere of constant introspection in a cyclical battle with worldly sin always ending with the acknowledged depravity.
The awareness of God's preordained elect few did not inhibit the perseverance all Puritans applied to acknowledge depravity and to try and overcome sinfulness. This concept of depravity as the cornerstone of Puritan faith became a central theme in Puritan writing. Poet Anne Bradstreet wrote about her life and how her trials ever urged her to continue her self-inspection in an effort to attempt to subdue the carnal desires of this world. The Puritan dogma of introspection created a framework for literary confession in the poem “Upon the Burning of Our House July 10th, 1666.” This framework freed Anne Bradstreet to fully explore her beliefs without direct challenge to authority; thus she both remains within and steps outside of traditional Puritan beliefs, ultimately allowing her to find solace and comfort in the promise of heavenly reward.
In the poem “Upon the Burning of Our House” Anne Bradstreet exemplifies the normal Puritan lifestyle of tension, although tempered with an allusion of hopefulness not usual in Puritan theology. Opening with an image of sleep, the poem alerts the reader to what would be considered a moral lapse by Bradstreet, for she was not being ever watchful for sin. The notion of millenialism, to go through life as though the second coming of Christ was imminent, meant that a Puritan was always prepared for the judgement day. In “Upon the Burning of Our House,” fire alludes to the day of judgement. When the sound of fire is heard, Bradstreet acknowledges that this preparedness is her goal, “That fearful sound of `Fire' and `Fire!' / Let no man know is my desire” (311). Remaining faithful to Puritan theology, Bradstreet immediately follows this with a plea to God for strength to face this earthly “distress / And not to leave me succorless” (311). To ask for God's help in overcoming sin would be a normal prayer; to ask for strength for human weakness within the framework of a material loss would on one level seem innocent and on another blasphemous. Anne Bradstreet, the daughter and wife of wealthy men, would have in her home accruements of this wealth, the loss of which would be painful to her not only as a woman, but as a poet who valued the beauty in nature and life. To the casual observer this confession sets up the tension implicit in the Puritan society. Some critics such as Robert Daly feel that this poem is “a document of Bradstreet's moral triumph over earthly attachments” (qtd. in Martin 18). On closer inspection, to imply that God would bolster humankind for desiring aid explores a different theology at work, one of a God of mercy and goodness, not the harsh and judgmental God of the Puritans who believed themselves to be the New Jews, being tested in the wilderness of a new world.
To counter and cover the exploration of Puritan theology in this plaintive cry for help in “Upon the Burning of Our House,” Bradstreet acknowledges the right of God to take what has been loaned. This would be acceptable since Puritans, as Jeffrey Hammond notes, “not only acknowledged a pull toward the world but insisted that such inclination was inevitably exposed by honest self-scrutiny” (108). The narrator notes: “It was His own, it was not mine, / Far be it that I should repine” (311). The acceptance of the judgment seems complete and unconditional. Bradstreet continues this projected contentment by saying, “ He might of all justly bereft / But yet sufficient for us left” (311). Seeming to praise and defend the fire as an act of God, Bradstreet has allowed herself to question this judgment and reconcile it as part of the will of God, as would be acceptable in the society of the day. However, some critics find more ambiguity than religious certainty in the domestic interlude discussed in “Upon the Burning of Our House” as Rosenmeir who concludes “that the microcosm of family life serve not only to reflect the world but to deflect it as well” thus reinforcing the opinion of this thesis (19). Anne Bradstreet Puritan poet of seventeenth century New England found solace in the promise of heavenly reward and shared this belief subtly with her family through her private writings. A woman of wealth and intelligence, who wrote poetry and verse in a time when minister John Dod admonished, “The Wiues dutie is to keepe the house,” must be a master of words to continue this exploration process without angering the general population and the clergy, which would end this literary freedom to question (qtd. in Rosenmeier, 15-16). Thus she offers her readers an ideology that matches their expectations.
In what may be construed as the tension in Puritan life, the next line in the poem speaks to the material world, where pain and loss are explored. Bradstreet's poem reveals memories and fantasies about her former home. Puritan theology would acknowledge the need of hopes and dreams, a need that is revealed here in depth and sorrow. The vehicle used to explore Puritan convention without seeming to challenge it is a conversation with the house:
Under thy roof no guest shall sit,
Nor at thy table eat a bit.
No pleasant tale shall e'er be told,
Nor things recounted done of old. (311)
This disclosure, couched immediately as depravity, is the work of a serious poet who, within the confines of time, gender, and society, reveals a woman of education and gentle upbringing mourning and exploring not only the present with its material loss and the lost years of an imagined future in her home, but the very essence of the value of earthly gain. The narrator continues: “There lay that store I counted best. / My pleasant things in ashes lie, / And them behold no more shall I” (311). The description here is not one of avaricious greed; her home and its contents are pleasant but not overvalued and sinful. The ability to preface this subtle statement with the acceptable mode of self-effacement would only stand to prove Bradstreet's mastery of her art form. This sequence of questioning personal loss ends with a reference to Ecclesiastes and earthly pleasure being but “Vanity” to firmly convince her audience of the authenticity of her depravity (311).
Yet this very sophisticated allusion has several meanings, for the speaker in Ecclesiastes incorporates skepticism and doubt within the polarities of religion. Poets in the bible and others like William Blake accepted these contraries within humanity, but within a Puritan society this questioning could be dangerous if not carefully worked by the poet. It is this “strength as a poet” that Hammond blames for the misreading of her poetry today in relation to seventeenth century Puritan values (84). He feels that the tension and inner questioning do not “repudiate Puritan interiority but reconfirms it” because that “turmoil” is essential to Puritanism (84). A different aspect is introduced by William Scheick who feels this line from Ecclesiastes is a “sudden intrusion of an ideological convention from outside the aesthetic/domestic feelings, from outside the authorial presence, previously evident in the poem . . . but it also signals the flight of the poet from her potentially rebellious sentiment, as if the house of her emotion-full verse were also dangerously on fire” (167). Bidding her earthly possessions and dreams “Adieu, Adieu” steps outside of the Puritan belief system but the immediate use of the scriptural quote from Ecclesiastes creates the illusion of remaining within the acceptable system.
Self-effacement is the vehicle Bradstreet uses to question, explore, and attempt to reconcile her love for the material with her desire for the eternal. The use of these literary confessions frees her to explore the Puritan belief system without a direct challenge. The initial chiding is the confession necessary to continue Bradstreet's exploration and search for heaven and its rewards. This lost home on earth is dung, she shares with her audience, because:
Thou hast an house on high erect,
Framed by that mighty Architect,
With glory richly furnished,
Stands permanent though this be fled. (312)
Bradstreet's belief in a heavenly resting place prepared and reserved for her after death, evident in the line, “Yet by His gift is made thine own,” is in conflict within the Puritan dogma of depravity and predetermination (312). The preceding admonishment to “Raise up thy thoughts above the sky” allows the Puritan reader to find the comfort level expected because if one has to raise up their thoughts, then they must be depraved (311). Yet the text suggests that for Anne Bradstreet Christ's sacrifice had allowed her entrance into heaven, “purchased and paid for too / By Him who hath enough to do” (312). This radical break with the dominant theology was not rebellion but a heartfelt belief held by an intelligent, independent, and educated woman who was aware of more than a simple doctrine. As Ann Stanford states: “It was a quiet rebellion, carried on as an undercurrent in an atmosphere of conformity” (79). The poem's subtlety is an example of both Bradstreet's trained writing skills and her awareness of how careful she had to be exploring the theology by which she lived.
The use of these oblique references to heaven as a constant continues when Bradstreet explores further and reminds herself and her audience that Christ paid the ultimate price for humankind. The price that Christ paid was to make permanent that house on high: “Yet by His gift is made thine own; / There's wealth enough, I need no more” (312). The exploration of the permanency of heaven is not outside the bounds of Puritan theocracy, but here Bradstreet has subtly alluded to the possibility that this “gift” is for everyone. Wendy Martin believes that “Upon a Burning of Our House” demonstrates that Bradstreet found “genuine comfort in the promise of an afterlife” (19). Continuing within the Puritan tradition of tension between the spiritual and the secular, Bradstreet asks the help of God, “The world no longer let me love,” while assuring herself that the gift is real, “My hope and treasure lies above” (312). The use of the word “hope” would imply that this is no guarantee, if Bradstreet had not mentioned in the last eight lines that this “house on high” was hers because of the sacrifice of Christ and that it was indeed the gift he had given her (312).
This reading is based within a historical context; the gift of heaven through good works was a commonly held belief for many in England at the time. Anne Bradstreet had the childhood of a gentlewoman and thus been exposed to a wider base of knowledge and canon. The idea of a guaranteed heavenly reward had no place in the Puritan dogma, yet it is subtly alluded to in the verses from “Upon the Burning on Our House July 10th, 1666.” This piousness was the goal to which all Puritans aspired, although to be aware of being pious would be sinful and to imagine that this guaranteed election into heaven close to blasphemy. Anne Bradstreet did explore and acknowledge this concept of heaven. The subtle allusion reveals a truly gifted and educated woman in full control of her art as a poet. The concept of heaven being Christ's gift to all humankind would not have been advisable to publicize in seventeenth century New England; however, by couching her sentiments in allusive language, Anne Bradstreet managed to remain true to her own sense of personal integrity while maintaining the norms of the society in which she lived. Her exploration of God and grace did not impede the process of introspection and full devotion to God, only gave a different scope to the faith, by which she lived, wrote, and died.
Anne Bradstreet, whom most critics consider America's first “authentic poet”, was born and raised as a Puritan. Bradstreet married her husband Simon at the tender age of eighteen. She wrote her poems while rearing eight children and performing other domestic duties. In her poem “Upon The Burning Of Our House, July 10th, 1666”, Bradstreet tells of three valuable lessons she learned from the fire that destroyed her home.
The first lesson Bradstreet learns from the fire occurs when she decides to thank God in the midst of her house burning:
And when I could no longer look
I blest His name that gave and took,
That laid my goods now in the dust.
Yea, so it was, and so `twas just.
It was His own, it was not mine,
Far be it that I should repine;
She explains that everything that was on fire she did not actually own, for they belonged to God's. Therefore, she could not mourn the lost because He had the right to take them away.
Another lesson Bradstreet learns from the fire is earthly pleasures are fleeting. In Stanzas 31-36, she realizes material possessions are easy to gain as well as loose.
No pleasant tale shall e'er be told,
Nor things recounted done of old.
No candle e'er shall shine in thee,
Nor bridegroom's voice e'er heard shall be.
In silence ever shall thou lie,
Adieu, Adieu, all's vanity.
She continues to reminisce on the things that might have taken place in the house but will no longer since it now consist mainly of ashes.
Bradstreet's last learned lesson is her wealth does not come from the things she gains on earth but her true wealth lies in heaven. She begins Stanzas 37-42 rebuking her thoughts of what will no longer take place in her ash filled home. Furthermore, Bradstreet gives her depiction of the “heavenly” place in Stanzas 43-48; which is built on permanent grounds and consist of expensive furniture all financed by God. In the last Stanzas of the poem Bradstreet begins focusing on the place where wealth is defined:
A price so vast as is unknown
Yet by His gift is made thine own;
There's wealth enough, I need no more,
Farewell, my pelf, farewell my store.
The world no longer let me love,
My hope and treasure lies above.
Bradstreet's strong Puritan background often influenced her writing, which is evident in this particular poem. Although she often questioned the harsh concept of a judgmental God, Bradstreet never doubted the actual existence of a higher being. Her acknowledgement of God through out this poem shows her respect and devotion to her Puritan beliefs as well as her love for the spiritual world.
Before the Birth of One of Her Children
The beauty of "Before the Birth of One of Her Children" by Anne Bradstreet lay in its universal themes and concerns. Although Bradstreet wrote this poem more than three hundred years ago, the maternal fears, love and hope she expressed will ring true to the minds of any modern woman who is expecting a child.
Anne Bradstreet was born in the year 1612 to a wealthy family in England. Growing up, she had the benefit of an extensive education. She came to the shores of New England as the young bride of Simon Bradstreet, who would one day be governor of Massachusetts. This new world was harsh and unfamiliar to her. The Puritan ethic and way of life was difficult and limiting, especially for women. Yet her poetry reveals a strong belief in her own intelligence and that of women in general. For that reason she is sometimes called America's first feminist. However independent her ideas, Anne embraced her husband's faith and sought comfort in its beliefs on eternity. Anne also dedicated herself to her marriage and children; it is clear she was very much in love with her husband. "Before the Birth of One of Her Children" reflects this focus on hearth, home and God.
She begins the poem by advising her child that death is part of life, that no matter how much we love another, they must leave us when their time has come and that this death sentence on all is "irrevocable".
"No ties so strong, no friends so dear and sweet,
But with death's parting blow is sure to meet. "
Anne writes of her own possible death, whether it be soon or in the future. One must consider that for women of that time, childbirth carried a serious risk of mortality. Also, Anne suffered from ill health for a great part of her life and so her thoughts of death are quite understandable. Anne does not yet know this child, yet she feels compelled to write to her unborn baby of that mysterious maternal love and bond.
"We both are ignorant, yet love bids me
These farewell lines to recommend to thee,
That when that knot's untied that made us one,
I may seem thine, who in effect am none. "
The poem speaks of remembering her worth and value and letting her faults be interred in her "oblivious grave". She instructs the child-to-be to watch over Anne's other children, especially in the case of a second wife taking her place in the home. Finally Anne speaks of the tears she shed as she wrote this poem to her yet unknown child, tears we can feel in her simple, yet elegant language.
And that is the beauty of Anne Bradstreet's poetry. Written in iambic pentameter with simple rhymes, she manages to write with both clarity and eloquence. Both her heart and mind are employed in each moving line. It is this quality that makes Bradstreet both accessible and and admired. "Before the Birth of One of Her Children" displays the qualities that make her one of America's finest poets.
To my Dear and Loving Husband
"To My Dear and Loving Husband" was written by America's first female poet, the Puritan, Anne Bradstreet. In fact, Anne Bradstreet is one of only a handful of female American poets during the first 200 years of America's history. After Bradstreet, one can list only Phillis Wheatley, the 18th century black female poet, Emma Lazarus, the 19th century poet whose famous words appear on the Statue of Liberty, and the 19th century Emily Dickinson, America's most famous female poet.
"To My Dear and Loving Husband" has several standard poetic features. One is the two line rhyme scheme. Another is the anaphora, the repetition of a phrase, in the first three lines. And a third is the popular iambic pentameter.
Iambic pentameter is characterized by an unrhymed line with five feet or accents. Each foot contains an unaccented syllable and an accented syllable, as in "da Dah, da Dah, da Dah, da Dah, da Dah."
The subject of Anne Bradstreet's love poem is her professed love for her husband. She praises him and asks the heavens to reward him for his love. The poem is a touching display of love and affection, extraordinarily uncommon for the Puritan era of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in which Anne Bradstreet lived.
Puritan women were expected to be reserved, domestic, and subservient to their husbands. They were not expected or allowed to exhibit their wit, charm, intelligence, or passion. John Winthrop, the Massachusetts governor, once remarked that women who exercised wit or intelligence were apt to go insane
Highly educated for a woman of her time, Anne Bradstreet deserves the accolade implicit in the title of her first volume of poetry, "The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America."
She and her Cambridge graduate husband Simon arrived in Massachusetts Bay with the first group of settlers in 1630. It is astonishing that she found time for poetry writing when she was the mother of eight children, a housewife before electricity and the invention of labor-saving devices. Duties as a hostess must have been considerable since both her father and husband were governors of the colony.
In another of her poems she describes the burning of her home on July 10, 1666. One can imagine what such a tragedy must have meant in Colonial times. Fortunately for us, her poetry had been sent to England for publication 16 years earlier and escaped destruction.
"To My Dear and Loving Husband" is an intensely felt expression of wifely love and devotion that achieves its effect through the use of paradox - seeming contradictions that are nevertheless true. One example is the opening line: "If ever two were one, then surely we." The commonplace notion of marital union receives novelty with the omission of a predicate in the main clause. The device is sustained throughout next two lines expressing first the depth of her love and then her marital bliss.
If ever man were loved by wife, then thee;
If ever wife was happy in a man
Bradstreet shifts to simile and hyperbole at line 5.
I prize thy love more than whole mines of gold,
Or all the riches that the East doth hold.
My love is such that rivers cannot quench,
Nor ought but love from thee give recompense.
She returns to paradox in her final couplet.
Then when we live, in love let's so persever,
That when we live no more we may live ever.
The archaic verb "persever" imports the idea of abiding continuity transcending death. In addition it repeats the key term "ever," used in each of the poem's thee opening lines as well as the concluding line.
Especially in these modern times, the concept of Puritanism rings with connotations of harsh, pleasureless self-denial. We automatically think of "hell-fire and brimstone" sermons and Salem witch trials, of Cotton Mather and Jonathan Edwards. It is refreshing to read a Puritan woman's expression of connubial delight that is both spiritual and sensual.
The Author to her Book
In Anne Bradstreet's poem "The Author to Her Book," the controlling metaphor is the image of a baby being born and cared for. This birth imagery expresses the complex attitude of the speaker by demonstrating that the speaker's low regard for her own work and her actions are contradictory.
The first effect of the birth imagery is to present the speaker's book as a reflection of what she sees in herself. Unfortunately, the "child" displays blemishes and crippling handicaps, which represent what the speaker sees as deep faults and imperfections in herself. She is not only embarrassed but ashamed of these flaws, even considering them "unfit for light". Although she is repulsed by its flaws, the speaker understands that her book is the offspring of her own "feeble brain", and the lamentable errors it displays are therefore her own.
When the speaker's book is returned by the publisher, the speaker's attempt to "wash (the) face" of her child only worsens the image of herself that she sees in it. Washing the child, rubbing off a blemish, and stretching its joints but failing to improve his imperfections all contribute to an image of the speaker rewriting her book, desperately trying to raise its quality up to her high standards, but discovering in the process that its imperfections and errors run too deep to be corrected, as do her own.
In the second half of the poem, a new facet of the speaker's attitude is displayed. In line 17, she wants to improve the ugliness of her "child" by giving him new clothes; however, she is too poor to do so, having "nought save homespun cloth" with which to dress her child. In the final stanza, the speaker reveals poverty as her motive for allowing her book to be sent to a publisher (sending her "child" out into the world) in the first place. This makes her attitude seem to contradict her actions. She is impoverished, yet she has sent her "child" out into the world to earn a living for her.
"The Author to Her Book" is dominated largely by a single metaphor: the portrayal of the speaker's book as a newborn baby with repulsive defects. This "baby"'s physical flaws mirror the speaker's own inner flaws, the existence of which explains why her decision to submit her book for publication contradicts her feelings of shame and embarrassment toward the work
Not Just a Wife Anne Bradstreet was America's first noteworthy poet in spite of the fact that she was a woman. Both the daughter and wife of Massachusetts governors, Bradstreet suffered all of the hardships of colonial life, was a mother, and still found time to write. Her poem, “The Author to Her Book,” is an example of Bradstreet's excellent use of literary techniques while expressing genuine emotion and using domestic subject matter. Because her father was a studious man, Bradstreet was able to receive a good education and was well read. She enjoyed serious and religious writings and admired many of the great poets of the time, among these Sir Philip Sidney, Edmund Spenser and John Donne. In fact she admired them so much that she imitated many of the literary devices that they used. “ The Author to Her Book”, written upon the unauthorized publication of a book of her poems, is a conceit, or extended metaphor. Bradstreet compares her book to a baby, calling it the “ill-formed offspring of [her] feeble brain.” She continues this conceit by calling her book her “rambling brat (in print)” and expressing the true “affection” she has for it. Just as a mother would wash and dress an infant before taking it out of the house, Bradstreet would have enjoyed the opportunity to revise her poems before they were put on display before the literary world. Bradstreet did revise her poems for a second edition and compares this revision to cleaning a child; “I washed thy face, but more defects I saw, And rubbing off a spot, still made a flaw.” Simply, the better she would make her book, the more little mistakes she would notice, just as a mother would notice any speck of dirt that was left on her virtually spotless child. Bradstreet goes on with her conceit by adding another literary device that was used by the poets she admired—the pun. “I stretched thy joints to make thee even feet.” Just as a mother of that time would have stretched her baby's legs to make them equal in length, Bradstreet worked to make the feet of her poem equal, in this case five feet—a pentameter—long, which is similar to the style of other poets during the colonial time. She ends her poem by reminding her “baby” to be sure to tell people that is has no father, only a poor mother. “The Author to Her Book” shows Bradstreet's feelings about the unauthorized printing of her work. She expresses her modesty about her ability to write by comparing her work to “homespun cloth” meaning that is was coarse and unrefined. Bradstreet also uses humor to express her feelings about the publication of her work without corrections, but there is still some genuine discomfort. “At thy return my blushing was not small” shows that she was a bit embarrassed about the world reading her rough drafts, but she amends her view towards the book as the poem continues. “Yet being mine own, at length affection would Thy blemishes amend…” illustrates that she truly loves her poetry, and after it is “cleaned” she takes pride in it. She show her delight in her work with the admonition “If for thy Father asked, say thou had'st none.” Bradstreet wanted everyone to recognize her for the talented woman writer that she was, but requested this acknowledgment in a humble way. Because she was a woman writer, Anne Bradstreet chose to write about domestic things. In “The Author to Her Book” Bradstreet writes about something she knows. Being a mother of eight, Bradstreet knew about children, and therefore, compares her book to a baby. Her domestic subject matter was unusual because the men of the time wrote about adventure and childbearing, while dangerous, was not thought to be exciting. Bradstreet brought her personal experiences as a woman into her writing and also provided an opening to a whole new dimension to American literature. Soon she would be the great poet being emulated by others. Edward Taylor is an example of this. In his poem “Huswifery,” Taylor used the spinning wheel—a domestic item-as his metaphor. Anne Bradstreet was a devoted wife and an excellent mother. She had a brilliant understanding of literary devices like the pun and the conceit. She drew from her life experiences to find wonderful comparisons and subjects, and used her writing to express her heartfelt emotions of embarrassment, love, and delight. Anne Bradstreet was a wife and mother, but she was also an extraordinary and inspiring writer.